Numerous types of equipment have already been proposed for collecting body wastes or urine from people who have been subjected to surgical operations such as enterostomy (ileostomy, colostomy, . . . ) or urostomy. This prior equipment includes systems constituted by single-use bags which are generally fixed directly to the skin of the user by an adhesive in the form of a ring or which are provided with a skin protector, and "two-part" systems in which the collection bag (which may be disposable or reusable) is removably coupled to a protective front plate itself fixed to the body of the user by means of a belt or a base plate provided with an adhesive or with adhesive rubber. Systems of the second-mentioned type must satisfy certain necessary conditions, some of which are mutually contradictory. The collector bag should be fixed onto the bag-carrier or protective front plate in such a manner that no significant pressure is applied to the region around the stoma which is sensitive and generally painful, while nevertheless ensuring a reliably leakproof connection when the system is assembled, but still allowing the parts of the system to be disaaembled easily, although never accidentally. In addition, the equipment should not give rise to peristomal skin complications, it should be as unobtrusive as possible, and it should be capable to being fitted to patients of very different morphologies. It is also desirable that, after receiving instruction from medical personnel, patients should themselves be capable of installing collection bags on their bag-carriers, and this naturally requires the operations of assembling and disassembling the bag and the bag-carrier to be as simple and as easy as possible, particularly for elderly users.
Thus, in an attempt to provide a solution to the problem posed, proposals have recently been made (in FR-A1-2 626 464, for example) to provide a two-part system in which the means for coupling the bag to the bag-carrier are constituted by a deformable collar and a split ring designed to clamp around the collar, and a short tube whose outside dimension is substantially equal to the inside dimension of the collar which is suitable for being slidably inserted into the collar or withdrawn therefrom when the ring is in an open position, such that when the ring is in a clamped position around the collar, the collar is deformed against the tube. It is relatively difficult to manufacture this system given that the diameters of the tube and of the collar must be made to very accurate tolerances so that a leakproof assembly is obtained by relatively little deformation of the collar, whose channel section normally hinders such deformation, Similar difficulties exist in very numerous proposed systems of the interfitting type, e.g. as described in EP-A-0 171 255, or the type described above, and it will be understood that in spite of the variety of solutions that are already known, the problem remains of providing improved stoma equipment capable of satisfying the various requirements for such equipment and also making it possible to place the bag in a desired direction relative to the bag-carrier, as may be desirable for increasing user comfort. Although this bag direction problem has already been considered, e.g. in EP-163 979, the solutions proposed are not entirely satisfactory, neither with respect to the way the parts are assembled nor with respect to leakproofing and/or the size of the devices for connecting the bag to its support.
Consequently a general object of the invention is to provide such equipment which is applicable to digestive or urinary stomata while satisfying the above conditions, and in which it is firstly extremely easy to install a bag on a bag-carrier previously fixed to the body of a user, and secondly in which this can be done while applying practically no pressure to the region adjacent to the stoma.
Another object of the invention is to provide such equipment which is very safe in use and, in particular, in which the leakproofing of the connection between the bag and the bag-carrier is reinforced whenever the pressure inside the bag increases.